Consider these questions when writing your reflective essay:

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Using a Genre Approach to Teaching the Reflective Essay

As teachers of writing, we will say to our students, “Read more!” “Write more!” Does it matter what they arereading and writing? Not really. However, it does matter that they are aware of what they are reading and writing.

Now to me, this list is more like a general rubric for what students would look at after they wrote a reflective essay. So let’s move backwards a bit and figure out first what makes a reflective essay just that. First, let’s look at the second word of the genre: essay. Essay connotes the form of writing in which it appears. What is the history of the essay? What are its characteristics?

3. The memoir, unlike the reflective essay, is written as a narrative, that is, “a story written in prose or perhaps verse, involving events, characters, and what the characters say and do” (Abrams 173).

Difference between essay writing and reflective writing.

There is no minimum or maximum length requirement; the essayshould be whatever length you need to convey to the faculty what you want them to know, both generally about your experiences as a writer at Simpson and specifically about the writing contained in your portfolio.

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5. Contains one or two unexpected insights into the subject. The writer, through reflection, will come to realize at least one insight that the subject had on into her life.

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Pursuing a Genre Study on the Reflective Essay In order to be most effective in teaching writing through a genre approach, it is most beneficial to follow a logical series of steps in doing so. The following steps are derived from Cooper as an effective method for instruction in the classroom.

1. Introducing the Genre

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The last step in the introductory phase, which reinforces for both teacher and student that the genre is understood, is to have the students locate examples of reflective essays on their own. Bomer is a strong advocate for this process enforcing the importance of the students being actively involved. He notes an important distinction between a behaviorist approach and a constructivist approach writing that, “learning from models does not have to mean that the teacher is the only one bringing the models into the community.

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Now that the students understand the components and criteria of a reflective essay, they are prepared to begin writing their own. Of course, the first step is deciding on a topic. There are a number of ways that the teacher may assist students in making this process easier. Ideally, students will already be brainstorming on possible topics because of the time spent on the introductory phase, in particular, reading touchstone texts of reflective essays.

In a classroom of my own, I would lead a topic brainstorming activity where I would participate with the class. A variety of prompts would be used in order to stir their minds and emotions. A great way to run this activity is to have the students bring in the touchstone texts that they have found themselves, and share them with the rest of the class.

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Reflective Essay Writing Examples: Rubric, Topics, Outline

Once students have decided on a topic for the essay and the teacher has approved it, the assignment along with a rubric will be given to each student in order to provide him/her with a structured guide so as to ease into the writing process.

Writing assignments should always be given to the students in writing with clear guidelines as to eliminate any confusion. Along with the assignment, as mentioned above, should appear a clear rubric so that the students may evaluate their own work prior to handing it in for a grade. This is not only fair, but gives the student an additional set of guidelines to refer to. Soven notes the importance of clear written assignments as well as rubrics. Rubrics have a double advantage for the teacher, as Soven notes: “These descriptions (rubrics for A-F papers) acknowledge the difficulty of devising a mechanical formula for assigning grades. Each description tries to account for a range of writing that can receive the same grade” (121).

Shown below is a reflective essay assignment. The rubric appears in Appendix B, p. 25. This rubric would be given to the participating students.

“When one thinks of the influence of a place on one’s writing, two aspects come to mind. First, the physical presence of the place itself—its geography, its appearance. Second, the people. For me, the second aspect of environment is the most important, although in everything I have written which is set in Canada, whether or not actually set in Manitoba, somewhere some of my memories of the physical appearance of the prairies come in. I had, as a child and as an adolescent, ambiguous feelings about the prairies. I still have them, although they no longer bother me. I wanted then to get out of the small town and go far away, and yet I felt the protectiveness of that atmosphere, too. I felt the loneliness and the isolation of the land itself, and yet I always considered southern Manitoba to be very beautiful, and I still do. I doubt if I will ever live there again, but those poplar bluffs and the blackness of that soil and the way in which the sky is open from one side of the horizon to the other—these are things I will carry inside my skull for as long as I live, with the vividness of recall that only our first home can have for us.”

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Having the students search for model texts not only ensures that our choice of genre will indeed be authentic, but it also demonstrates that authenticity, in effect saying to the students, this isn’t just a school thing. You can find this in your world” (124). By becoming familiar with touchstone texts of the reflective essay, students are prompted to brainstorm their own essay topic ideas, which prompts them into the next phase of the genre study.

Reflective Essay Writing Guide: Top 20 Inspiring Topics

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Step by step explaining of how to write a Reflection Paper with topic ideas and sentence starting ideas for reflecting. Includes sample essay.

4. The reflections are approached through a variety of strategies. The writer should approach the reflection using various literarystrategies. Literary techniques such as flashback, for example, may be effective. A variety of literary devices may be used to accomplish this as well.